Back in 2012, I started this blog at the encouragement of my children. My daughter has taught children from low income households for years. Some were lamenting that their SNAP money ran out before the month ran out. My daughter told one that her mom knew how to stretch a food dollar.
In the early 1970’s I found myself a single parent with more bills than money. We went through double digit inflation with no raises in three years and my child support was spasmodic at best. I had no choice but to economize the best I could. We turned off heat on the bedrooms, I stopped the dishwasher to air dry and I read everything I could get from the library and watched everything I found on our 10 inch black and white tv with rabbit ears. I already knew some principles from watching my mother. I just added to it, some things I tried were hits, some things were misses. It was a learning curve.
Times changed and things got a lot better, but we still economized. It was a habit by then. We continued to find new ways to save money on groceries. I am still learning. I don’t make money from this blog, my motivation is to help people.
Groceries on the cheap takes a different approach to buying your groceries. Instead of buying just what you need a day or week at a time , you buy what you need to replenish your supply. Instead of running out of things and stretching the last week of the month to get by and running to the store the minute pay day comes, you always have food in the house. Studies have revealed that not having food in the house lowers your life expectancy.
Having a four to six weeks supply of food is not hoarding and it is a good insurance policy in case of adversity. We have had roads flood, snow storms, amd a government shutdown on recent years. Having a four week supply of food takes care of at least one necessity. It is not hoarding
The basic premice is to buy food when it is at its lowest price and eat it when it is at the highest price.
It is the same premise as stockbrokers use. And not different than our great grandmothers on the farm, canning food when it was orevelamt in the summer to get through the winter,
This principle allows us to eat well on a four dollar a day budget. The idea is that if you can do it for four dollars a day, it isn’t hard to spend more. Lol 😂
Unless you have a big influx of money, this doesn’t happen overnight. Bit by bit, it happens. We have had a four dollar a day budget for over two years now. We strive for low sugar, low salt, low trans fats, non gmo, HFCS, hydroginated oil, and junk food.
We do get REAL Parmesan cheese, real vanilla, real maple syrup, real butter. We afford this because we don’t buy fake boxes of food.
We talk about the tricks retailers use to get you to buy more, Pitfalls, efficient scratch cooking, meal plans, basic stock lists, new recipe ideas, old recipe ideas revisited to be healthier, and tools to make life easier.
I blog everyday.
